Circuit breakers are conventionally used to protect electric power distribution circuits against arcing faults, ground faults, short circuit faults, and/or overloads. Typically, miniature circuit breakers are used particularly to protect branch circuits in homes and in commercial and light industry applications. For example, the miniature circuit breakers utilize an arc fault detector, a magnetic armature that is responsive to large magnetic forces generated by a short-circuit current, and/or a thermo-magnetic trip device that incorporates a bimetal responsive to persistent overload conditions.
When a fault or overload condition is detected on the protected circuit, the circuit breaker is tripped to open separable contacts of the circuit breaker and, thus, interrupt current flow in the protected circuit. The status of the circuit breaker is typically indicated by the position of an actuating handle, which indicates whether the circuit breaker is in an ON position, OFF position, or TRIPPED position. However, when the circuit breaker is tripped, the position of the actuating handle does not indicate the type of fault that caused the trip condition. In other words, a user cannot determine whether the circuit breaker has been tripped based on an arcing fault condition, a ground fault condition, a short circuit fault condition, or an overload condition.
To address this problem, some current circuit breaker designs include Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs) that are multi-colored or flash to indicate the reason why the circuit breaker is tripped. However, including additional components further increases the cost and complexity of the circuit breaker.
What is needed, therefore, is a trip indication for a circuit breaker that addresses the above-stated and other problems.